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Skyrim and the Denial of Death

Recently I have been playing the game Skyrim. I play the game with the sound off so I can listen to audiobooks. Lately I have been been listening to Ernest Becker‘s The Denial Of Death. Here’s what the Wikipedia has to say about the book.

Another theme running throughout the book is that humanity’s traditional “hero-systems” i.e. religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason; science is attempting to solve the problem of man, something that Becker feels it can never do. The book states that we need new convincing “illusions” that enable us to feel heroic in the grand scheme of things, i.e. immortal. Becker, however, does not provide any definitive answer, mainly because he believes that there is no perfect solution. Instead, he hopes that gradual realization of man’s innate motivations, namely death, can help to bring about a better world.

Hah! and here I am playing a first-person hero simulation game. Today’s convincing illusions sure are on the nose.